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CHAPTER XVIII, 



BIOGRAPHY. 



BIOGRAPHY is one of the oldest species of 

 writing. After the restoration of learning this 

 branch of historical composition became particu- 

 larly popular in Italy and France. From the latter 

 country the same taste passed into Great-Britain, 

 where it has been ever since growing. Since the 

 commencement of the eighteenth century, every 

 literary country of Europe has produced a greater 

 number of biographical works than at any former 

 period. There certainly never was an age in which 

 Memoirs, Lives, collections of Anecdotes, &c. re- 

 specting the dead, were so numerous, and had 

 such a general circulation, as that which is the sub- 

 ject of this retrospect. 



Perhaps few works have contributed more to 

 form a taste for biography, in modern Europe, 

 than the Dictionary of M. Bayle, one of the most 

 curious and learned publications of any age. Early 

 in the century under review this work was trans- 

 lated into English, and circulated in Great-Britain. 

 Not long afterwards it was republished, with very 

 large additions, which nearly doubled its original 

 extent. The Biographical History of England, by 

 Grainger, is entitled to the next place in recount- 

 ing the British productions of this nature. This 

 was followed by the Biographia Britannica, by Dr. 

 Kippis, after the manner of Bayle. Since the 

 appearance of this large collection of biography, 

 several works, of a similar kind, have been laid 



